PEP308: a call for usability studies (was Re: Update to PEP308: if-then-else expression)

[Peter Hansen]

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> More power to her.  The colon doesn't play an essential technical role in
> Python's grammar for statements -- the formal grammar almost never needs it.
> It's there because usability studies in ABC found that programming newbies
> had trouble with indentation alone denoting block structure, but the
> troubles went away if the block-opening statement grew a trailing colon.
> Carrying that into an embedded expression seems to make some kind of "it's
> the same as" sense to Python grownups, but it couldn't be more removed from
> the original purpose of the colon.  

I have access to an innocent (as in largely unexposed to the discussion
about PEP308 and its alternative) group of Python programmers at work,
specifically eight of them.  They have a wide variety of backgrounds,
most with some C, all but one with at least two languages other than 
Python.

I'm willing to conduct more "experiments on <shudder> people" if it
will help the cause... but I don't have the time, willingness, or
perhaps even competence to craft a decent study myself.

Proposals are welcome, online or off.  If I see one that appears 
well-enough conceived to make it worth the effort, I'll put my 
vict^H^H^H^H employees to the test and report the results here.

-Peter